Am I being scammed?

[rickwall23]

Looking for advice. I'm just a guy who's used eBay on and off for like a decade for both buying and selling. I feel like I know what I'm doing as a seller, but I've never had experience with any kind of scammers. I just made two sales though and both of them are raising significant red flags.

1) Buyer 1 messaged me first to haggle on price. I explained that it didn't matter because their profile said they're in Russia and I'm not shipping internationally. They countered that they have a US address, so I accepted the sale. They paid immediately via PayPal. Buyer 1 has over 1000 positive feedback and has been an eBay member about 10 years, but they have their feedback set to private and the address they want me to use appears to be a strip mall in Delaware. I messaged them about my concerns, and they said they just don't want people to be able to see what they buy on eBay and included 4 USPS tracking numbers showing delivery at the address they want me to ship to.

2) Buyer 2 went ahead and bought an item and immediately paid with PayPal. Their address appears to be a residential address in the US. The problem is that the buyer is a new member with 0 feedback. I'm not super opposed to selling to new members, but this person's username is also just a completely random string of letters and numbers. I messaged buyer 2 about my concerns, and they seem like a legitimate buyer. They said they checked out as a guest so their guess is that eBay just assigned them a random string of characters as a username but that they've now updated their username. That makes sense to me, but I can't figure out anyway to verify this.

Anybody got thoughts? Scammers? Legit buyers?

[tamaralea]

Probably legit.  A good way to avoid many foreigners, using freight forwarders, is to block foreign currency in PayPal.

[bonjourami]

and the second buyer is probably a guest buyer, given a random string of letters. I dont see any red flags with either of them.

[dhbookds]

First is probably a freight forwarder, as long as you mail to the address in the paypal payment, there should be no trouble.

Second is a guest buyer as said........

Just some info, in general.............if a buyer pays and they don't request a change of address after payment, you don't have the right not to complete the transaction.......you must ship in order to avoid Ebay discipline on your account.

[rickwall23]

Thanks for all of the input so far. I'll probably just ship everything out this afternoon. I'm probably just paranoid now because I got a bunch of scam messages from random buyers after the sales claiming they just purchased an item from me and needed the address changed.

[cashvaluerecovery2011]

Rick all you can do is follow the rules and hope. If you put items for sale here and someone bought them and paid for them you are obligated to ship. Ebay says if the seller ships to the address the buyer provides that you have some seller protection if you can prove the item arrived.

Once items arrive however..........your protection goes out the door whether its a fishy buyer or one with 5000 positive feedback. Nobody can leave negatives for them and any flags they "might" have earned are completely undetectable or useful to us sellers. All you can do follow the rules and hope. Dont sell expensive stuff here. If the anxiety or cost of doing business due to scams gets to high sell elsewhere. After 20 years here the majority of my sales moved elsewhere due to cost of doing business here going up across the board.

Other tip if you dont mind my rambling. If you send any messages to your buyers, send only upbeat positive messages. Anything considered remotely negative, off putting, worrisome etc will be used by scammers as a reason for returns/cancelations and will be used by ebay customer service as a reason to instantly side with the buyer.

Goodluck.

[tunicaslot]

No offense Rick - but with low feedback like you have and the fact you don't sell often - I would never list phones or electronics on here. I pray your transactions go off without a hitch and they are great buyers but I have my doubts think that you will end up with at least 1 false SNAD case and lose your money and the phone.

[myjunqueyourtreasure]

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@rickwall23 wrote:

Thanks for all of the input so far. I'll probably just ship everything out this afternoon. I'm probably just paranoid now because I got a bunch of scam messages from random buyers after the sales claiming they just purchased an item from me and needed the address changed.

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Congratulations on realising they were scams. Seems to be the latest one doing the rounds and a lot of new sellers get caught.

[mg152]

You’re messaging buyers to see if they’re scammers? That will bite you in the behind. I woukd never message a buyer to let them know I think they’re dishonest.

[herecometheplayas]

How do you do that? I used to have the blocks but now I am getting buyers with non-us curency

[tamaralea]

You used to be able to set PayPal to US currencies only.  Now you have to call them and for it, unless you have a business account.  I won't ship internationally and I don't like freight forwarders because

1. Paypal charges 1.5% more for foreign currencies

2. Most of my items are breakable and reshippers will repack.

3. When they tell me it broke in shipment, I have to prove they used a reshipper.

4. AND LAST, BUT NOT LEAST,  I have sold rare items to Russia and China, only to have dozens appear here a few months later.  

[rickwall23]

I've sold many things on Ebay before including phones but mostly music equipment and have never had any problems. It has been a couple years though. Why are you skeptical of these buyers? Are electronics just a heavily targeted area for scams?

[rickwall23]

In my past eBay sales experience, I've also had to cancel a handful of orders after being paid for various reasons, and it's never really been an issue. Did something change in the last couple years that made it so sellers couldn't cancel orders?

In particular, I remember it used to be very common to see listings in which the sellers said they would automatically cancel any order placed by someone with no feedback. Is that just not a thing anymore?

[tamaralea]

You new around here, Rick?  Yes electronics are the most targeted items.  New sellers are the most targeted victims.  And cancelling sales, will get cost you an extra 4% on your eBay invoice.

[sam9876]

Cancelling an order will get you a defect.  A couple of those and you will be suspended.